~ Musings of a Bean Counter

The Assistant

Today was slightly amusing, and it wasn’t due to my assistant’s hijinx.

To make it clear for my mushrooms I am responsible for the Accounts Payable processing for “non-production” vendors. As I work at an advertising company there are vendors who do work which are specific to particular advertising campaigns so they charged to job numbers (or dockets). I do the non-production, also known as Corporate Accounts Payable… silly things like paying the rent, commodity tax, income tax, payroll costs, and other fun stuff which most would call “overhead”.

The Accounting Manager responsible for the “production-A/P” wanted to have a chat with me with regards to my assistant – she helps him out by processing the production invoices. He asked me if I am overworking her as he thinks her workload is too much – she’s making too many mistakes.

I assured him that her workload has not increased, but there are different facets of her role that she is facing now (which she didn’t before, because certain issues did not arise for her before).

What is at issue are certain things she won’t do, and I support her in this:

He wants her to hand deliver invoices to approving managers instead of sending them out for approvals via the interoffice mail – I think it’s a waste of time and it isn’t our job to hand-hold the account directors.

He wants her to work an extra 30minutes a day as, according to him, everyone takes 30 minutes in the morning to settle in before they start their workday – I disagree, as she doesn’t spend time at the water-cooler discussing soap operas, and other fun television crap. I also disagree as I am not allowed, legally, to demand that she work overtime. The Manager doesn’t understand the Employment Standards Act with regards to overtime.. I can ask, she can refuse and I cannot punish her for refusing.

The Manager had concerns but had no concrete examples of where she is failing/not meeting expectation. I did sit down with her to discuss his concerns, just in case if he was right and she did feel overwhelmed. I reassured her that my role is to support her and that I view her & myself as a team. She doesn’t feel overwhelmed and it appears that my near-daily adhoc accounting lessons are working – she’s spending time actually thinking through the procedures she use to follow blindly.